Washington Repeals Power-Plant Carbon Rules While India's Solar Lines Idle at a Third of Capacity

A formal US rollback, a new coal plant in Assam, and a widening cell-to-module gap in India cut against an otherwise routine week of capacity additions. Rupee figures below are converted at ₹96 = $1 (Trading Economics, Sept 18, 2026).

The week in 120 words

The US EPA formally repealed Biden-era carbon limits for coal and gas power plants on September 14 — the biggest single deregulatory step yet for the US power sector, and a reminder that policy gains are reversible in a way that installed steel and silicon are not. India added 12,256 MW to its approved solar-module manufacturers list this week, taking the list to roughly 225.5 GW, but its module-assembly lines are running at only 35–40% utilization because domestic cell supply hasn't caught up — a paradox worth sitting with. Elsewhere: US hyperscalers kept bankrolling long-duration storage for AI data centers, Egypt signed a 2 GW wind deal that includes its first turbine factory, and a UK carbon-removal certifier closed a $50M round.

MNRE expands the approved solar-module list to roughly 225.5 GW. 

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy added 12,256 MW (12.3 GW) of module capacity to ALMM List-I this week, taking the cumulative enlisted capacity to approximately 225.5 GW (Mercom India, September 17–18). This is an administrative listing decision — manufacturers cleared to sell into government-linked tenders — not power generated or even panels shipped. See "Number of the week" below for why that distinction is doing real work this week.

Two state-run majors go shopping for storage and wind, but nothing's built yet. 

NTPC Renewable Energy Ltd floated a tender for a 215 MW wind project in Madhya Pradesh, and Coal India Ltd, a coal company, invited bids for an 80 MW/320 MWh battery storage system across four Odisha substations, build-own-operate with 15 years of O&M (Renewable Watch, September 17). Both are announcements only: bids close October 9. Coal India tendering grid batteries is a small, genuine signal of a state coal miner hedging into storage, not yet a project.

Adani breaks ground on a ₹48,000 crore (roughly $5.0 billion) coal plant in Assam. 

Adani Power laid the foundation stone for a 3,200 MW ultra-supercritical thermal plant (4×800 MW) at Chapar, Dhubri district, on September 20, framed by the company and the Assam government as turning the state into an "energy hub" (India TV News, September 20; corroborated by Global Energy Monitor's project tracker). This is a large, real new commitment to coal capacity in 2026, not a retrofit or a life extension of an existing unit — worth naming plainly rather than filing under "infrastructure investment."

Brookfield commits up to $600 million to ACME's green-molecule projects. 

Brookfield's Global Transition Fund agreed to invest up to $600 million in ACME Cleantech Ventures for a roughly 100,000-tonnes-a-year green methanol supply deal and a 300 MW firm/assured-peak-power project spanning India and the Middle East (Renewable Watch, September 18). It's a commitment, not disbursed capital or an operating plant; green methanol projects without a signed offtaker deserve skepticism, and this one at least comes with a stated supply volume.

Juniper Green Energy fully commissions a 75 MW wind-solar hybrid for Tata Power. 

The 36.25 MWp solar leg at Bhigwan (Pune district) and the 50 MW wind leg at Nilanga (Latur district) are both now operational, supplying Tata Power Distribution under Juniper's first PPA with the utility (pv magazine India, SolarQuarter, September 18). Juniper's operating renewable fleet now totals 2,725 MWp plus 503 MWh of battery storage — a plant that happened, not one that was announced.

GREW Solar and Caelux partner on 4 GW of perovskite-tandem modules. 

The Indian independent power producer signed on for four gigawatts of Caelux's perovskite-on-silicon tandem modules, which the US company claims exceed 29% efficiency; commercial production is targeted for 2028 (Renewable Watch, September 17). Treat the efficiency figure as a manufacturer's claim until independently tested at scale, and the 2028 date as exactly that — a target, two years out.

Number of the week: 225.5 GW. 

That's India's cumulative ALMM List-I approved module manufacturing capacity after this week's addition (Mercom India, September 17–18, 2026, citing MNRE). It replaces a prior list of roughly 213.2 GW. The figure measures manufacturing capacity cleared to sell modules into government-linked projects — not installed capacity, not generation, and, per the item above it, not even capacity that's currently running: Mercom separately reported this week that actual module-plant utilisation nationally sits at just 35–40%, because domestic cell production hasn't kept pace with module-line buildout (Mercom India, September 16).

World Updates

The US formally tears up power-plant carbon rules. 

On September 14, the EPA repealed Biden-era limits that would have required coal plants to capture most of their CO2 by 2039 or shut, and imposed comparable standards on new gas plants (NPR, Washington Post, September 14–15). EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the rules "led to higher energy prices and prevented the country from reaching its full energy potential." Power plants are the US's second-largest emissions source after transport, and this is finalized agency action, not a proposal.

US Commerce finalizes triple-digit duties on Asian solar cells — pending one more vote. 

The Commerce Department's final determination sets combined antidumping-and-countervailing duties of roughly 249% on crystalline-silicon solar cells from India, up to about 268% from Indonesia, and up to about 219% from Laos (pv magazine USA, September 11; Federal Register notice, September 16). The duties are not yet in force: the International Trade Commission still has to deliver a final injury vote on October 14, and if that's affirmative, Commerce issues the formal order on November 2. Note the irony for readers of the India section above: India's cell shortage and this tariff on India's cell exports are, for now, two unrelated problems.

AI data centres are quietly becoming long-duration storage's biggest customer. 

Bloomberg reported this week that financed and announced long-duration battery storage capacity in the US has reached roughly 150 GWh since early 2025, about five times the total at the end of 2024, driven by hyperscalers like Google and Meta seeking 10-to-100-plus-hour storage to firm up power for AI data centres (Bloomberg, September 18). Some underlying deals, including Google-Form Energy's 300 MW/30 GWh Minnesota project and Meta-Noon Energy's up to 1 GW/100 GWh framework, were signed earlier in 2026; what's new this week is the aggregate total becoming visible. This is grid-scale, hours-duration storage, not the minutes-duration lithium-ion batteries more common elsewhere in this newsletter.

China's coal reflex reasserts itself. 

Authorities urged coal producers to maintain output as domestic coal prices climbed to a three-year high (Bloomberg, September 18). We could only confirm this via Bloomberg's headline and summary, with no independent second source, so treat the "three-year high" framing as reported rather than verified. Directionally it fits a pattern this year of China leaning on coal for energy security even as it builds renewables faster than anywhere else.

Egypt signs a 2 GW wind deal that comes with its own turbine factory. 

China's SANY Renewable Energy agreed to build a 2,000 MW wind project in the Gulf of Suez, with grid connection targeted within 23 months of final agreements, and, more durably significant than the megawatts, Egypt's first wind-turbine manufacturing plant, meant to supply Egypt and export across Africa and the Middle East (Associated Press, September 16). The same story is a useful gut-check on execution risk in the region: it cites Nigeria's 10 MW Lambar Rimi wind farm, contracted in 2010 for a 2012 completion but commissioned only in September 2025, thirteen years late. A signed deal and a running turbine factory are not the same thing; watch for the groundbreaking, not just the signing photo.

UK carbon-removal certifier closes a $50 million Series A. 

Isometric, which certifies industrial carbon-removal claims, closed an additional $10 million tranche this week, bringing its Series A to $50 million (€43 million) and total funding to $75 million (Sept 15). It says it has certified more than 16 million tonnes of carbon removal across 200-plus projects for customers including Microsoft, Boeing, and JPMorgan Chase — the largest volume of any certifier, by its own account (EU-Startups, September 15). Worth remembering: Isometric is a for-profit company rating the market it's raising money to serve.

The hard part

India: the manufacturing list is growing faster than the manufacturing. This week's headline number, 225.5 GW of approved module capacity, sits awkwardly next to a separate Mercom report that India's actual module-assembly plants are running at just 35–40% utilization, because domestic solar-cell production hasn't scaled to match the module lines built under PLI and ALMM incentives (Mercom India, September 16). This isn't a one-week blip; industry sources quoted elsewhere by Mercom expect the cell shortage to persist for six to seven more months. It matters because the entire policy logic behind ALMM and India's manufacturing incentives was to build a sovereign supply chain, not just a longer list of firms with idle factories. For this to turn around, the polysilicon-to-cell chain, including Premier Energies' and Vikram Solar's announced multi-gigawatt cell lines, has to actually reach commercial production at the pace it's been promised, not just get financed or listed.

The world: the US just removed its main federal lever for decarbonizing power plants. This was the primary binding, timetabled mechanism forcing US utilities toward decarbonization rather than leaving it to economics alone, and it matters more this year than most: 2026 is on pace to be among the warmest years on record. Reversing it would take either a future EPA re-regulating under the Clean Air Act, a process the Supreme Court has already narrowed once in West Virginia v. EPA, or states and utilities continuing to retire coal anyway on cost grounds, which is happening in some places but isn't guaranteed nationally without a federal backstop.

Worth watching

• October 9, 2026 — bids close on NTPC REL's 215 MW Madhya Pradesh wind tender and Coal India's 80 MW/320 MWh Odisha battery storage tender: an early read on how state-run buyers are pricing wind and storage this quarter.

• October 14, 2026 — the US International Trade Commission delivers its final injury vote on antidumping/countervailing duties for solar cells from India, Indonesia, and Laos. An affirmative vote triggers formal duty orders.

• November 2, 2026 — if the ITC vote is affirmative, Commerce is due to issue the formal orders imposing cash-deposit rates as high as roughly 249–268% on those solar cell imports.

• November 9–20, 2026 — COP31 opens in Antalya, Türkiye, the first UN climate summit since the US federal power-plant rollback; watch how host Türkiye and the G77 frame adaptation finance without steady US federal engagement.